WE sang for a while, and then we told gags and recited limericks for a while, and I noticed that the kid and Maggie had wandered into the back room—the one with the latch on the door.
Oswiak’s wife asked me, very puzzled: “Doc, w’y dey do dot flyink by planyets?”
“It’s the damn govermint,” Sam Fireman said.
“Why not?” I said. “They got the Bowman Drive, why the hell shouldn’t they use it? Serves ’em right.” I had a double Scotch and added: “Twenty years of it and they found out a few things they didn’t know. Redlines are only one of them. Twenty years more, maybe they’ll find out a few more things they didn’t know. Maybe by the time there’s a bathtub in every American home and an alcoholism clinic in every American town, they’ll find out a whole lot of things they didn’t know. And every American boy will be a pop-eyed, blood-raddled wreck, like our friend here, from riding the Bowman Drive.”
“It’s the damn govermint,” Sam Fireman repeated.
“And what the hell did you mean by that remark about alcoholism?” Paddy said, real sore. “Personally, I can take it or leave it alone.”
So we got to talking about that and everybody there turned out to be people who could take it or leave it alone.
IT was maybe midnight when the kid showed at the table again, looking kind of dazed. I was drunker than I ought to be by midnight, so I said I was going for a walk. He tagged along and we wound up on a bench at Screwball Square. The soap-boxers were still going strong. As I said, it was a nice night. After a while, a pot-bellied old auntie who didn’t give a damn about the face sat down and tried to talk the kid into going to see some etchings. The kid didn’t get it and I led him over to hear the soap-boxers before there was trouble.
One of the orators was a mush-mouthed evangelist. “And oh, my friends,” he said, “when I looked through the porthole of the spaceship and beheld the wonder of the Firmament—”
“You’re a stinkin’ Yankee liar!” the kid yelled at him. “You say one damn more word about can-shootin’ and I’ll ram your spaceship down your lyin’ throat! Wheah’s your redlines if you’re such a hot spacer?”
The crowd didn’t know what he was talking about, but “wheah’s your redlines” sounded good to them, so they heckled mushmouth off his box with it.
I got the kid to a bench. The liquor was working in him all of a sudden. He simmered down after a while and asked: “Doc, should I’ve given Miz Rorty some money? I asked her afterward and she said she’d admire to have something to remember me by, so I gave her my lighter. She seem’ to be real pleased with it. But I was wondering if maybe I embarrassed her by asking her right out. Like I tol’ you, back in Covington, Kentucky, we don’t have places like that. Or maybe we did and I just didn’t know about them. But what do you think I should’ve done about Miz Rorty?”
“Just what you did,” I told him. “If they want money, they ask you for it first. Where you staying?”
“Y.M.C.A.,” he said, almost asleep. “Back in Covington, Kentucky, I was a member of the Y and I kept up my membership. They have to let me in because I’m a member. Spacers have all kinds of trouble, Doc. Woman trouble. Hotel trouble. Fam’ly trouble. Religious trouble. I was raised a Southern Baptist, but wheah’s Heaven, anyway? I ask’ Doctor Chitwood las’ time home before the redlines got so thick—Doc, you aren’t a minister of the Gospel, are you? I hope I di’n’ say anything to offend you.”
“No offense, son,” I said. “No offense.”
I walked him to the avenue and waited for a fleet cab. It was almost five minutes. The independent cabs roll drunks and dent the fenders of fleet cabs if they show up in Skid Row and then the fleet drivers have to make reports on their own time to the company. It keeps them away. But I got one and dumped the kid in.
“The Y Hotel,” I told the driver. “Here’s five. Help him in when you get there.”
WHEN I walked through Screwball Square again, some college kids were yelling “wheah’s your redlines” at old Charlie, the last of the Wobblies.
Old Charlie kept roaring: “The hell with your breadlines! I’m talking about atomic bombs. Right—up—there!” And he pointed at the Moon.
It was a nice night, but the liquor was dying in me.
There was a joint around the corner, so I went in and had a drink to carry me to the club; I had a bottle there. I got into the first cab that came.
“Athletic Club,” I said.
“Inna dawghouse, harh?” the driver said, and he gave me a big personality smile.
I didn’t say anything and he started the car.
He was right, of course. I was in everybody’s doghouse. Some day I’d scare hell out of Tom and Lise by going home and showing them what their daddy looked like.
Down at the Institute, I was in the doghouse.
“Oh, dear,” everybody at the Institute said to everybody, “I’m sure I don’t know what ails the man. A lovely wife and two lovely grown children and she had to tell him ‘either you go or I go.’ And drinking! And this is rather subtle, but it’s a well-known fact that neurotics seek out low company to compensate for their guilt feelings. The places he frequents. Doctor Francis Bowman, the man who made space flight a reality. The man who put the Bomb Base on the Moon! Really, I’m sure I don’t know what ails him.”
The hell with them all.
The Goodly Creatures
In one of the best novels to date in the hard-cover science fiction boom, TAKEOFF (Doubleday, 1952), C.M. Kornbluth demonstrated that he could do two things exceedingly well: write first-level science fiction, about the immediately foreseeable future, which is more fascinating than the most involved projections of remote vastness; and create a novel which does not appeal strictly to science fiction readers, but which can stand on its literary merits as a representative of the quality fiction of the future. Both of these virtues, as desirable as they are rare, appear in this study of the goodly creatures who, however brave may be the world around them, will still find themselves trapped in the mazes which man can design far more cruelly for himself than for any rat.
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in ‘t!
Miranda in The Tempest
FARWELL suddenly realized that his fingers had been trembling all morning, with a hair-fine vibration that he couldn’t control. He looked at them in amazement and rested them on the keys of his typewriter. The tremor stopped and Farwell told himself to ignore it; then it would go away. The copy in the typewriter said: Kumfyseets—and in the upper left-hand corner and under it:—hailed by veteran spacemen as the greatest advance in personal comfort and safety on the spaceways since—
Since what? It was just another pneumatic couch. Why didn’t he ever get anything he could work with? This one begged for pix—a stripped-down model in a Kumfyseet, smiling under a pretended seven-G takeoff acceleration—but the Chicago Chair Company account didn’t have an art budget. No art, and they were howling for tear-sheets already.
—comfort and safety on the spaceways since—
He could take Worple to a good lunch and get a shirt-tail graf in his lousy “Stubby Says” column and that should hold Chicago Chair for another week. They wouldn’t know the difference between Worple and—
Farwell’s intercom buzzed. “Mr. Henry Schneider to see you about employment.”
“Send him in, Grace.”
Schneider was a beefy kid with a practiced smile and a heavy handshake. “I saw your ad for a junior copywriter,” he said, sitting down confidently. He opened an expensive, new-looking briefcase and threw a folder on the desk.
Farwell leafed through it—the standard presentation. A fact sheet listing journalistic honors in high school and college, summer jobs on weeklies, “rose to sergeantcy in only ten months during U.M.T. period.” Copies of by-line pieces pasted neatly, without wrinkles, onto heavy pages. A TV scenario for the college station. A letter from the
dean of men, a letter from the dean of the journalism school.
“As you see,” Schneider told him, “I’m versatile. Sports, travel, science, human-interest, spot news—anything.”
“Yes. Well, you wouldn’t be doing much actual writing to start, Schneider. When—”
“I’m glad you mentioned that, Mr. Farwell. What exactly would be the nature of my work?”
“The usual cursus honoruni—” Schneider looked blank and then laughed heartily. Farwell tried again: “The usual success story in public relations is, copy boy to junior copywriter to general copywriter to accounts man to executive. If you last that long. For about three months you can serve Greenbough and Brady best by running copy, emptying waste baskets and keeping your eyes open. After you know the routine we can try you on—”
Schneider interrupted: “What’s the policy on salaries?” He didn’t seem to like the policy on promotions.
Farwell told him the policy on salaries and Schneider tightened his mouth disapprovingly. “That’s not much for a starter,” he said. “Of course, I don’t want to haggle, but I think my presentation shows I can handle responsibility.”
Farwell got up with relief and shook his hand. “Too bad we couldn’t get together,” he said, talking the youngster to the door. “Don’t forget your briefcase. If you want, you can leave your name with the girl and we’ll get in touch with you if anything comes up. As you say, you might do better in another outfit that has a more responsible job open. It was good of you to give us a try, Schneider . . .” A warm clap on the shoulder got him out.
Next time, Farwell thought, feeling his 45 years, it would be better to mention the starting salary in the ad and short-stop the youngsters with inflated ideas. He was pretty sure he hadn’t acted like that beefy hotshot when he was a kid—or had he?—comfort and safety on the space-ways since—
He turned on the intercom and said: “Get me Stubby Worple at the Herald.” Worple was in.
“Jim Farwell, Stub. I was looking at the column this morning and I made myself a promise to buzz you and tell you what a damn fine job it is. The lead graf was sensational.” Modest protests.
“No, I mean it. Say, why don’t we get together? You got anything on for lunch?”
He did, but how about dinner? Hadn’t been to the Mars Room for a coon’s age.
“Oh, Mars Room. Sure enough all right with me. Meet you in the bar at 7:30?” He would.
Well, he’d left himself wide open for that one. He’d be lucky to get off with a $30 tab. But it was a sure tear-sheet for the Chicago Chair people.
Farwell said to the intercom: “Get me a reservation for 8 tonight at the Mars Room, Grace. Dinner for two. Tell Mario it’s got to be a good table.”
He ripped the Kumfyseets first ad out of the typewriter and dropped it into the waste basket. Fifty a week from Chicago Chair less 30 for entertainment. Mr. Brady wasn’t going to like it; Mr. Brady might call him from New York about it to say gently: “Anybody can buy space, Jim. You should know by now that we’re not in the business of buying space. Sometimes I think you haven’t got a grasp of the big picture the way a branch manager should. Greenbough asked about you the other day and I really didn’t know what to tell him.” And Farwell would sweat and try to explain how it was a special situation and maybe try to hint that the sales force was sometimes guilty of overselling a client, making promises that Ops couldn’t possibly live up to. And Mr. Brady would close on a note of gentle melancholy with a stinging remark or two “for your own good, Jim.”
Farwell glanced at the clock on his desk, poured one from his private bottle; Brady receded a little into the background of his mind.
“Mr. Angelo Libonari to see you,” said the intercom. “About employment.”
“Send him in.”
Libonari stumbled on the carpeting that began at the threshold of Harwell’s office. “I saw your ad,” he began shrilly, “your ad for a junior copywriter.”
“Have a seat.” The boy was shabby and jittery. “Didn’t you bring a presentation?”
He didn’t understand. “No, I just saw your ad. I didn’t know I had to be introduced. I’m sorry I took up your time—” He was on his way out already.
“Wait a minute, Angelo! I meant, have you got any copies of what you’ve done, where you’ve been to school, things like that.”
“Oh.” The boy pulled out a sheaf of paper from his jacket pocket. “This stuff isn’t very good,” he said. “As a matter of fact, it isn’t really finished. I wrote it for a magazine, Integration, I don’t suppose you ever heard of it; they were going to print it but they folded up, it’s a kind of prose poem.” Abruptly he ran dry and handed over the wad of dog-eared, interlined copy. His eyes said to Farwell: please don’t laugh at me.
Farwell read at random: “—and then the Moon will drift astern and out of sight, the broken boundary that used to stand between the eye and the mind.” He read it aloud and asked: “Now, what does that mean?”
The boy shyly and proudly explained: “Well, what I was trying to bring out there was that the Moon used to be as far as anybody could go with his eyes. If you wanted to find out anything about the other celestial bodies you had to guess and make inductions—that’s sort of the whole theme of the piece—liberation, broken boundaries.”
“Uh-huh,” said Farwell, and went on reading. It was a rambling account of an Earth-Ganymede flight. There was a lot of stuff as fuzzy as the first bit, there were other bits that were hard, clean writing. The kid might be worth developing if only he didn’t look and act so peculiar. Maybe it was just nervousness.
“So you’re specially interested in space travel?” he asked.
“Oh, very much. I know I failed to get it over in this; it’s all second-hand. I’ve never been off. But nobody’s really written well about it yet—” He froze.
His terrible secret, Farwell supposed with amusement, was that he hoped to be the laureate of space flight. Well, if he wasn’t absolutely impossible, Greenbough and Brady could give him a try. Shabby as he was, he wouldn’t dare quibble about the pay.
He didn’t quibble. He told Farwell he could get along on it nicely, he had a room in the run-down sub-Bohemian near north side of town. He was from San Francisco, but had left home years ago—Farwell got the idea that he’d run away—and been in a lot of places. He’d held a lot of menial jobs and picked up a few credits taking night college courses here and there. After a while Farwell told him he was hired and to see the girl for his withholding tax and personnel data forms.
He buzzed his copy chief about the boy and leaned back in good humor. Angelo could never get to be an accounts man, of course, but he had some talent and imagination. Tame it and the kid could grow into a good producer. A rocket fan would be handy to have around if Sales stuck Ops with any more lemons like Chicago Chair.
Worple drank that night at the Mars Room like a man with a hollow leg and Farwell more or less had to go along with him. He got the Kumfyseets item planted but arrived at the office late and queasy as McGuffy, the copy chief, was bawling out Angelo for showing up in a plaid shirt, and a dirty one at that.
McGuffy came in to see him at 4:30 to ask about Angelo. “He just doesn’t seem to be a Greenbough and Brady man, J. F. Of course if you think he’s got something on the ball, that’s good enough for me. But, honestly, can you see him taking an account to lunch?”
“Is he really getting in your hair, Mac? Give him a few days.”
McGuffy was back at the end of the week, raging. “He showed me a poem, J. F. A sonnet about Mars. And he acted as if he was doing me a favor! As if he was handing me a contract with Panamerican Steel!”
Farwell laughed; it was exactly what he would expect Angelo to do. “It was his idea of a compliment, Mac. It means he thinks you’re a good critic. I know these kids. I used to—” He broke off, dead-pan.
McGuffy grumbled: “You know I’m loyal, J. F. If you think he’s got promise, all right. But he’s driving me nuts.”
After the copy chief left, Farwell shook his head nervously. What had he almost said? “I used to be one myself.” Why, so he had—just about 25 years ago, a quarter of a century ago, when he went into radio work temporarily. Temporarily! A quarter-century ago he had been twenty years old. A quarter-century ago he had almost flunked out of college because he sat up all night trying to write plays instead of studying.
He hazily remembered saying to somebody, a girl, something like: “I am aiming for a really creative synthesis of Pinero and Shaw.” Somehow that stuck, but he couldn’t remember what the girl looked like or whether she’d been impressed. Farwell felt his ears burning: “A really creative synthesis of Pinero and Shaw.” What a little—!
He told the intercom: “Send in Libonari.”
The boy was more presentable; his hair was cut and he wore a clean blue shirt. “I’ve had a couple of complaints,” said Farwell. “Suppose we get this clear: you are the one who is going to conform if you want to stay with us. Greenbough and Brady isn’t going to be remolded nearer to the heart’s desire of Angelo Libonari. Are you going out of your way to be difficult?”
The boy shrugged uneasily and stammered: “No, I wouldn’t do anything like that. It’s just, it’s just that I find it hard to take all this seriously—but don’t misunderstand me. I mean I can’t help thinking that I’m going to do more important things some day, but honestly, I’m trying to do a good job here.”
“Well, honestly you’d better try harder,” Farwell said, mimicking his nervous voice. And then, more agreeably: “I’m not saying this for fun, Angelo. I just don’t want to see you wasted because you won’t put out a little effort, use a little self-discipline. You’ve got a future here if you work with us instead of against us. If you keep rubbing people the wrong way and I have to fire you, what’s it going to be? More hash-house jobs, more crummy furnished rooms, hot in the summer, cold in the winter. You’ll have something you call ‘freedom,’ but it’s not the real thing. And it’s all you’ll have. Now beat it and try not to get on Mr. McGuffy’s nerves.”
Collected Short Fiction Page 181
